These system calls change the owner and group of a file. The
chown(), fchown(), and lchown() system calls differ only in how the
file is specified:
* chown() changes the ownership of the file specified by pathname,
which is dereferenced if it is a symbolic link.
* fchown() changes the ownership of the file referred to by the open
file descriptor fd.
* lchown() is like chown(), but does not dereference symbolic links.
Only a privileged process (Linux: one with the CAP_CHOWN capability)
may change the owner of a file. The owner of a file may change the
group of the file to any group of which that owner is a member. A
privileged process (Linux: with CAP_CHOWN) may change the group
arbitrarily.
If the owner or group is specified as -1, then that ID is not
changed.
When the owner or group of an executable file is changed by an
unprivileged user, the S_ISUID and S_ISGID mode bits are cleared.
POSIX does not specify whether this also should happen when root does
the chown(); the Linux behavior depends on the kernel version, and
since Linux 2.2.13, root is treated like other users. In case of a
non-group-executable file (i.e., one for which the S_IXGRP bit is not
set) the S_ISGID bit indicates mandatory locking, and is not cleared
by a chown().
When the owner or group of an executable file is changed (by any
user), all capability sets for the file are cleared.
fchownat()
The fchownat() system call operates in exactly the same way as
chown(), except for the differences described here.
If the pathname given in pathname is relative, then it is interpreted
relative to the directory referred to by the file descriptor dirfd
(rather than relative to the current working directory of the calling
process, as is done by chown() for a relative pathname).
If pathname is relative and dirfd is the special value AT_FDCWD, then
pathname is interpreted relative to the current working directory of
the calling process (like chown()).
If pathname is absolute, then dirfd is ignored.
The flags argument is a bit mask created by ORing together 0 or more
of the following values;
AT_EMPTY_PATH (since Linux 2.6.39)
If pathname is an empty string, operate on the file referred
to by dirfd (which may have been obtained using the open(2)O_PATH flag). In this case, dirfd can refer to any type of
file, not just a directory. If dirfd is AT_FDCWD, the call
operates on the current working directory. This flag is
Linux-specific; define _GNU_SOURCE to obtain its definition.
AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW
If pathname is a symbolic link, do not dereference it: instead
operate on the link itself, like lchown(). (By default,
fchownat() dereferences symbolic links, like chown().)
See openat(2) for an explanation of the need for fchownat().

Depending on the filesystem, errors other than those listed below can
be returned.
The more general errors for chown() are listed below.
EACCES Search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix.
(See also path_resolution(7).)
EFAULT pathname points outside your accessible address space.
ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
pathname.
ENAMETOOLONGpathname is too long.
ENOENT The file does not exist.
ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
EPERM The calling process did not have the required permissions (see
above) to change owner and/or group.
EPERM The file is marked immutable or append-only. (See
ioctl_iflags(2).)
EROFS The named file resides on a read-only filesystem.
The general errors for fchown() are listed below:
EBADF fd is not a valid open file descriptor.
EIO A low-level I/O error occurred while modifying the inode.
ENOENT See above.
EPERM See above.
EROFS See above.
The same errors that occur for chown() can also occur for fchownat().
The following additional errors can occur for fchownat():
EBADF dirfd is not a valid file descriptor.
EINVAL Invalid flag specified in flags.
ENOTDIRpathname is relative and dirfd is a file descriptor referring
to a file other than a directory.

Ownership of new files
When a new file is created (by, for example, open(2) or mkdir(2)),
its owner is made the same as the filesystem user ID of the creating
process. The group of the file depends on a range of factors,
including the type of filesystem, the options used to mount the
filesystem, and whether or not the set-group-ID mode bit is enabled
on the parent directory. If the filesystem supports the -o grpid
(or, synonymously -o bsdgroups) and -o nogrpid (or, synonymously
-o sysvgroups) mount(8) options, then the rules are as follows:
* If the filesystem is mounted with -o grpid, then the group of a new
file is made the same as that of the parent directory.
* If the filesystem is mounted with -o nogrpid and the set-group-ID
bit is disabled on the parent directory, then the group of a new
file is made the same as the process's filesystem GID.
* If the filesystem is mounted with -o nogrpid and the set-group-ID
bit is enabled on the parent directory, then the group of a new
file is made the same as that of the parent directory.
As at Linux 4.12, the -o grpid and -o nogrpid mount options are
supported by ext2, ext3, ext4, and XFS. Filesystems that don't
support these mount options follow the -o nogrpid rules.
Glibc notes
On older kernels where fchownat() is unavailable, the glibc wrapper
function falls back to the use of chown() and lchown(). When
pathname is a relative pathname, glibc constructs a pathname based on
the symbolic link in /proc/self/fd that corresponds to the dirfd
argument.
NFS
The chown() semantics are deliberately violated on NFS filesystems
which have UID mapping enabled. Additionally, the semantics of all
system calls which access the file contents are violated, because
chown() may cause immediate access revocation on already open files.
Client side caching may lead to a delay between the time where
ownership have been changed to allow access for a user and the time
where the file can actually be accessed by the user on other clients.
Historical details
The original Linux chown(), fchown(), and lchown() system calls
supported only 16-bit user and group IDs. Subsequently, Linux 2.4
added chown32(), fchown32(), and lchown32(), supporting 32-bit IDs.
The glibc chown(), fchown(), and lchown() wrapper functions
transparently deal with the variations across kernel versions.
In versions of Linux prior to 2.1.81 (and distinct from 2.1.46),
chown() did not follow symbolic links. Since Linux 2.1.81, chown()
does follow symbolic links, and there is a new system call lchown()
that does not follow symbolic links. Since Linux 2.1.86, this new
call (that has the same semantics as the old chown()) has got the
same syscall number, and chown() got the newly introduced number.

This page is part of release 4.13 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2017-09-15 CHOWN(2)